IN 1855, the Swiss cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt published one of art history’s foundational texts, Der Cicerone: Eine Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens (Cicerone: Introduction to the Enjoyment of the Art Works of Italy). The book turned the emerging field away from an understanding of art as a passive reflection of religious and political conditions, toward a view of a liberated pursuit of aesthetic goals. Burckhardt, focusing on the Italian Renaissance, chose as one of his exemplars an artist largely overlooked today: the Venetian painter Paolo Veronese. Burckhardt hailed Veronese’s paintings as the highest expression of what he called Existenzmalereirepresentations of pure existence, free from abstract theological concerns. Indeed, even Veronese’s religious scenes were only a pretext to “celebrate a beautiful and free human race in full enjoyment of its